An elegant, detailed and accurate news site for those interested in the maritime business in the Southeastern United States, Caribbean and Central America

April 10, 2018

Today in front of the combined Senate committees Mark Zuckerberg made a key distinction. It is assumed that Facebook accumulates data on its users that it then sells to advertisers. But this is not the case at all. Facebook accumulates data on its users that the users allow Facebook to collect. On the other hand advertisers come to Facebook and describe in detail the kind of people they want to reach with their advertisements.

Facebook then compares the advertisers' request to the data that Facebook has collected. Facebook then selects the individuals who will see the advertisers who are appropriate and it connects the Facebook users with the advertiser. Actually an algorithm does it. It does not inform the advertiser about any of the actual data used to match it with the Facebook user under any circumstances.

Advertiser A wants to advertise snow shoes to individuals who need snow shoes, perhaps, and those who can afford snow shoes. Facebook scours its users for information about the amount of snow they endure. It looks for anything that might be said about snow and snow shoes by its members. Facebook decides which of those who had issues with snow --- probably everybody who has issues with snow --- and Facebook then allows the snow shoe advertiser to access each and every person who has issues with snow who is on Facebook and who -- and this important, who has not specifically said they don't want advertisements for snow shoes or any other shoes.

You talk about cars and they connect the car ads to you. You talk about sports cars and the connect the sports car companies (who have paid to be connected) with you. You talk about Chevys and you get some Chevy ads. And for your convenience you get the Chevy ads from Chevy companies that are close to your location, which the local Chevy companies pay for. But the ads are always a pass through from Facebook to you based on your data and not from the Chevy dealer. He may be wasting his money advertising to you. But he will never know it.

March 19, 2018

Russian government cyber actors are engaging in a sophisticated cyber attack campaign targeting organization in critical infrastructure sectors. This attack is occurring in two stages. Initially, threat actors are attacking the networks of smaller organizations with preexisting relationships with larger organizations that are the ultimate targets of the attacks. Malware and spear phishing are the most common tactics during these initial "staging" attacks. The threat actors then use their access to staging targets’ networks to target their intended, larger victims. Organizations in the maritime industry are encouraged to learn more about this attack and ensure that they are following cyber risk management best practices to limit their vulnerability to this attack.

Background

Per Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reports, Russian government actors are targeting organizations in the energy, nuclear, water, aviation, critical manufacturing, and other commercial sectors. DHS and FBI warn of a sophisticated, multi-layered intrusion campaign focused on gaining remote access to small commercial-focused networks via malware or spear phishing campaigns. Once compromised, these networks enable Russian government cyber actors to gain remote access into targeted sector networks, facilitating network reconnaissance and the collection of information pertaining to Industrial Control Systems (ICS). This includes shipping and marine terminal facilities.

Russian government cyber actors are using a range of tactics, techniques, and procedures to further this campaign, including:

Spear-phishing emails (from compromised legitimate account),

Watering-hole domains,

Credential gathering,

Open-source and network reconnaissance,

Host-based exploitation, and

Targeting ICS infrastructure.

The threat actors appear to have deliberately chosen the organizations they targeted, rather than pursuing them as targets of opportunity. Staging targets held preexisting relationships with many of the intended targets.

What Should a Maritime Company Do?

Although most maritime companies will not be intended targets of these attacks, maritime companies have preexisting relationships with a wide variety of governmental and commercial actors that support wide-ranging US interests, and accordingly should be aware of their potential status as a staging target for this attack. More specifically, maritime transportation companies can be exploited to access and attack US commercial entities.

As part of this announcement, the US-CERT released indicators of compromise (IOCs) related to this campaign, available at: https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/alerts/TA18-074A . DHS and FBI recommended that network administrators review the IP addresses, domain names, file hashes, network signatures, and YARA rules provided at the above link, and add the IPs to their watchlists to determine whether malicious activity has been observed within their organization. They also advised system owners to run the YARA tool on any system suspected to have been targeted by these threat actors.

HudsonCyber recommends that all clients immediately:

Review the detection and prevention guidelines and other best practices detailed at the link above.

Implement a robust data backup process that safeguards any data considered valuable to their organization or critical to their business operations; data backups must be stored offline (disconnected from the network) and tested regularly to confirm their integrity. Perform regular testing to confirm data integrity.

Advise shore-based employees and crews of the increase in cyber threats and provide awareness training on social engineering tactics, safe Internet browsing behaviors, and how to respond to suspected cyber incidents.

Source: US Department of Homeland Security

For more information about how HudsonCyber can support your cyber risk management needs, contact us today:

These activities will assist ports in the implementation of the National Preparedness System by supporting the building, sustainment, and delivery of core capabilities essential to achieving the Goal of a secure and resilient Nation.

Out of the total of $100,000 available nation-wide, Florida’s Port Security Grant programs secured about $5 million. The grantees are:

April 02, 2015

About $100 million will be available to various port authorities, facility operators, and state and local government agencies who have developed an Area Maritime Security Plan as part of the 2015 FEMA port security grant program

Eligibility Criteria is established pursuant to the Maritime Transportation Security Act of 2002, as amended (MTSA) wherein DHS established a risk-based grant program to support maritime security risk management.

This year funding is directed towards the implementation of AMSPs and Facility Security Plans (FSP) among port authorities, facility operators, and state and local government agencies that are required to provide port security services.

Application Submission Deadline: May 19, 2015 at 11:59 PM EDT

In administering the grant program, national, economic, energy, and strategic defense concerns based upon the most current risk assessments available will be considered.

This year there will be no Port Area Group Designations. Instead, all Port Areas will be selected for funding through the FY 2015 PSGP competitive review process.

For the most part those who were eligible to apply in 2014 will be eligible this year except “Applications for the purpose of providing a service, product, project, or investment justifications (IJ) on behalf of another entity such as sub-recipients or a consortia are ineligible for funding. Applications will only be accepted and considered for funding from direct recipients.”

(so let us know if you need a hand)

Only one (1) application per eligible entity within each Port Area is permitted. Each application may contain multiple IJs. An investment justification supports the funding of a proposed project. The location where the project is primarily implemented is considered the Port Area of the application. Applicants with facilities in multiple Port Areas may submit one (1) application per Port Area. Since program funding is risk based by Port Area, no single application should include investment justifications for projects intended to be implemented in multiple Port Areas. For example, state entities that operate in multiple Port Areas within the state must submit separate applications to fund projects in each of these Port Areas.

Cost Share or Match

There is a Cost-Match requirement for this program. All PSGP award recipients must provide a non-Federal match (cash or in-kind) supporting at least 25 percent of the total project cost for each proposed project. Exceptions to the cost match requirement may apply. Please see Appendix B – PSGP Funding Guidelines for details. The non-Federal share can be cash or in-kind, with the exception of construction activities, which must be a cash-match (hard).

NOTE: If you are going to apply for this funding opportunity and have not obtained a Data Universal Numbering System (DUNS) number and/or are not currently registered in the System for Award Management (SAM), please take immediate action to obtain a DUNS Number, if applicable, and then to register immediately in SAM. It may take 4 weeks or more after you submit your SAM registration before your registration is active in SAM, then an additional 24 hours for Grants.gov to recognize your information. Information on obtaining a DUNS number and registering in SAM is available from Grants.gov at: http://www.grants.gov/web/grants/applicants/applicant-resources.html

Special Unit of Dade County officers protect PortaMiami's Gantry Cranes

The Grant Programs Directorate (GPD), a component of the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), is announcing the availability of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2014 Program Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOA). This bulletin provides details on the six FY 2014 preparedness grant programs being made available. The FOAs being released today represent $1,616,346,000 in FY 2014 federal assistance. These FOAs are available online at http://www.fema.gov/grants and at http://www.grants.gov.
FOAs are available for the following programs:
Homeland Security Grant Program (HSGP)
Tribal Homeland Security Grant Program (THSGP)
Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP)
Intercity Passenger Rail – Amtrak (IPR) Program
Port Security Grant Program (PSGP)
Transit Security Grant Program (TSGP)

The total amount available under the Port Security Grant Program for FY 2014 Port is $100,000,000 to directly support maritime transportation infrastructure security activities. PSGP is one tool in the comprehensive set of measures authorized by Congress and implemented by the Administration to strengthen the Nation’s critical infrastructure against risks associated with potential terrorist attacks. FY 2014 PSGP funds are intended to improve port-wide maritime security risk management; enhance maritime domain awareness; support maritime security training and exercises; and to maintain or reestablish 4

In the 2013 PSG Program the Port of Miami did not qualify for any assistance for port security and each terminal and potential receipient was compelled to complete all qualification and application processes with the benefit of an area-wide fiduciary agent.

Until last year the grant funding had traditionally been sought by the area fiduciary agent which has been the Miami River Marine Group. This year with the Treasurer of the Miami River Marine Group serving house arrest and fines for federal criminal charges of building illegal docks, the port tenants of the Miami River and the Port of Miami along with other beneficiaries including Marine Patrol and Police security agencies, questions have arising about who can now legally manage Port Security grants from previous grant years.

The 2014 grants are to accomplish or continue the National Preparedness Goal (the Goal): Prevention, Protection, Mitigation, Response, and Recovery.
Detailed guidance and application instructions for all grant programs are provided at http://www.fema.gov/grants.

Eligible applicants must apply for funding through the Grants.gov portal, accessible on the Internet at http://www.grants.gov. When applicants apply through http://www.grants.gov, applicants must submit the Standard Form 424 in the initial Grants.gov application. The FEMA Non-Disaster (ND) Grants system will retrieve the Standard Form 424 directly from the Grants.gov system and will automatically populate the relevant data fields in the ND Grants application.

To allow sufficient time for FEMA to conduct an initial eligibility review of the application prior to the final submission deadline, grantees are encouraged to initiate and complete the Standard Form 424 submission within Grants.gov by no later than ten days prior to the end of the application period for all programs.

Upon the completion of the initial review, FEMA will determine whether an application is eligible to proceed further and will notify the applicant to complete their submission by fulfilling additional application requirements (e.g., Budget, Investment Justification, Work Plan, etc.) by no later than May 23, 2014 for all programs. Completed final applications for all grant programs must be submitted no later than 11:59 PM EDT, May 23, 2014.

The application must be complete and only final submissions made through the ND Grants system located at https://portal.fema.gov will be accepted. If you need assistance registering for the ND Grants system, please contact FEMA’s Enterprise Service Desk at (888) 457- 3362. Applicants are encouraged to begin their ND Grants registration at the time of solicitation to ensure they have adequate time to start and complete their application submission.

Additional questions may be directed to the FEMA Headquarters Program Analyst (PA) or the Centralized Scheduling and Information Desk (CSID) at askcsid@dhs.gov or (800) 368-6498.

A summary of eligible applicants and deadlines is included in Appendix A. Specific allocations for programs marked with an asterisk (*) are included in Appendix B.

FY 2014 Homeland Security Grant Program (HSGP)
The HSGP is one tool among a comprehensive set of measures authorized by Congress and implemented by the Administration to help strengthen the Nation against risks associated with acts of terrorism and other catastrophic events. The HSGP is comprised of three related grant programs:
State Homeland Security Program (SHSP)*. In FY 2014, the SHSP provides $401,346,000 to support building and sustaining core capabilities. Capability targets are established during the State, Urban Area, and regional Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (THIRA) process, and assessed in the State Preparedness Report (SPR) to inform planning, organization, equipment, training, and exercise needs to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from acts of terrorism and other catastrophic events.

Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI)*. In FY 2014, the UASI program provides $587,000,000 to address the unique risk-driven and capabilities-based needs of high-threat, high-density Urban Areas. Based on the capability targets identified during the THIRA process and associated assessment efforts, UASI program funds assist grantees in building an enhanced and sustainable capacity to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from acts of terrorism.

State Homeland Security Program (SHSP) and Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI) Only: Per Section 2006 of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (Public Law 107–296), as amended ( 6 U.S.C. § 607), FEMA requires that states dedicate at least 25 percent (25%) of the combined HSGP funds allocated under SHSP and UASI toward law enforcement terrorism prevention activities (LETPA) linked to one or more core capabilities within the Goal. The LETPA allocation can be from SHSP, UASI, or both.

Operation Stonegarden (OPSG). In FY 2014, OPSG provides $55,000,000 to support enhanced cooperation and coordination among local, tribal, territorial, State, and Federal law enforcement agencies in a joint mission to secure the United States’ borders along routes of ingress from international borders to include travel corridors in States bordering Mexico and Canada, as well as States and territories with international water borders.
FY 2014 Tribal Homeland Security Grant Program (THSGP)
In FY 2014, the THSGP provides up to $10,000,000 to directly eligible tribes to support the building, sustainment, and delivery of core capabilities to enable Tribes to strengthen their capacity to prevent, protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from potential terrorist attacks and other hazards.
FY 2014 Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP)
In FY 2014, the NSGP provides $13,000,000 in funding support for hardening and other physical security enhancements to nonprofit organizations that are at high risk of terrorist attack and located within one of the specific UASI-eligible Urban Areas. The program seeks to integrate the preparedness activities of nonprofit organizations that are at high risk of terrorist attack with broader state and local preparedness efforts. The NSGP also serves to promote coordination and collaboration in emergency preparedness activities among public and private community representatives as well as state and local government agencies.
FY 2014 Intercity Passenger Rail – Amtrak (IPR) Program
In FY 2014, the IPR Program provides $10,000,000 to the National Passenger Railroad Corporation (Amtrak) to protect critical surface transportation infrastructure and the traveling public from acts of terrorism and to increase the resilience of the Amtrak rail system.
FY 2014 Port Security Grant Program (PSGP)*
In FY 2014, the PSGP provides $100,000,000 to directly support maritime transportation infrastructure security activities. PSGP is one tool in the comprehensive set of measures authorized by Congress and implemented by the Administration to strengthen the Nation’s critical infrastructure against risks associated with potential terrorist attacks. FY 2014 PSGP funds are intended to improve port-wide maritime security risk management; enhance maritime domain awareness; support maritime security training and exercises; and to maintain or reestablish 4
maritime security mitigation protocols that support port recovery and resiliency capabilities. PSGP investments must address U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) identified vulnerabilities in port security and support the prevention, protection, response, and recovery from attacks involving improvised explosive devices (IED) and other non-conventional weapons.
FY 2014 Transit Security Grant Program (TSGP)
In FY 2014, the TSGP provides $90,000,000 to directly support transportation infrastructure security activities. TSGP is one tool in the comprehensive set of measures authorized by Congress and implemented by the Administration to strengthen the Nation’s critical infrastructure against risks associated with potential terrorist attacks. TSGP provides funds to eligible publicly owned operators of public transportation (which include intra-city bus, commuter bus, ferries, and all forms of passenger rail) to protect critical surface transportation infrastructure and the traveling public from acts of terrorism and to increase the resilience of transit infrastructure. A-1
Appendix A
Table 1. Eligible Applicants and Deadlines Program Eligible Applicants Application Deadline Action on Applications
HSGP SHSP SAA No later than 11:59 p.m. EST, May 23, 2014 FEMA will evaluate, act on applications, and make awards on or before September 30, 2014
UASI
OPSG
THSGP Directly eligible tribes No later than 11:59 p.m. EST, May 23, 2014 FEMA will evaluate, act on applications, and make awards on or before September 30, 2014
NSGP SAA on behalf of nonprofit organizations within eligible Urban Areas No later than 11:59 p.m. EST, May 23, 2014 FEMA will evaluate, act on applications, and make awards on or before September 30, 2014
IPR National Passenger Railroad Corporation (Amtrak) No later than 11:59 p.m. EST, May 23, 2014 FEMA will evaluate, act on applications, and make awards on or before September 30, 2014
PSGP All entities covered by an Area Maritime Security Plan (AMSP), including 145 specifically identified critical ports No later than 11:59 p.m. EST, May 23, 2014 FEMA will evaluate, act on applications, and make awards on or before September 30, 2014
TSGP Eligible transit agencies are determined based on daily unlinked passenger trips (ridership) and transit systems that serve historically eligible UASI jurisdictions. Certain ferry systems are eligible to participate in the FY 2014 TSGP and receive funds No later than 11:59 p.m. EST, May 23, 2014 FEMA will evaluate, act on applications, and make awards on or before September 30, 2014

October 26, 2013

A catastrophic, prolonged failure of the electrical grid—the sort of event whose effects are depicted in National Geographic Channel’s upcoming American Blackout, which premieres Sunday—may seem like just apocalyptic science fiction to some viewers. Unfortunately, though, the possibility of such a breakdown is all too real. (See related interactive: “Survive the Blackout.”)

Government and utility industry officials are so concerned, in fact, that in November, they will stage a massive emergency drill, called GridEx II, that will involve thousands of utility workers, business executives, National Guard officers, FBI antiterrorism experts and government officials from the U.S., Canada and Mexico. They’ll practice responding to a simulated failure of large parts of the electrical system across North America. (See related quiz: “What You Don’t Know About Electricity.”)

The scenario envisioned by GridEx II is a particularly scary one, in which terrorists or an enemy country stages a combination of cyber attacks and physical attacks that destroy or render inoperable crucial power facilities and take down large sections of the grid. As a May 2013 Congressional report noted, sophisticated cyber saboteurs may already be probing our vulnerability to a massive blackout. U.S. utility companies already come under frequent attack from Internet hackers who continually try to infect utilities’ computer networks with malware and search for security flaws. One company alone told congressional investigators that it was hit with an astonishing 10,000 attacks in a typical month.

If hackers managed to penetrate utility companies’ electronic defenses, they might be able to give instructions to key pieces of equipment that would cause them to fail. In a 2006 study, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory demonstrated that an attacker could instruct an electrical generator’s turbine to spin wildly out of control until smoke began pouring out, as this video illustrates. Since then, we’ve seen a real-life example of how such vandalism easily could be ratcheted up to a massive scale. In 2010, a piece of malware called Stuxnet destroyed as many as 1,000 centrifuges in an Iranian nuclear fuel-processing plant, in an attack that some suspect was launched by U.S. and/or Israeli clandestine agencies.

No wonder that former federal counterterrorism advisor Richard Clarke has warned that such an “electronic Pearl Harbor” could cause devastating damage and thousands of deaths across the nation. A 2012 National Academy of Sciences report concurred, envisioning that attackers using a combination of hacking and physical sabotage could cripple the U.S. power grid and cause cascading failures of equipment that could take months to fix.

“We are woefully unprepared for any large-scale geographic outage that might take place over an extended period of time,” explained Joel Gordes, research director for the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit, an independent group that assesses the danger of such attacks and what it would take to thwart them. He said that while some generators and transmission lines probably would survive such an attack, they might not be able to muster enough juice to reboot the grid, which experts call a “black start.” And if critical equipment is damaged beyond repair, it might be necessary to transport replacement units long distances—an undertaking that would be difficult, if communications systems were also seriously damaged by the attack.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz said the Energy Department had recently created a new internal cyber council, spanning four offices. “We believe this is an area of increasing focus,” he said at a Center for Strategic and International Studies on Thursday. “Our energy infrastructures are coming under increasing and more sophisticated cyber attacks, and we have to stay ahead of that.”

Besides a cyber attack, experts have envisioned other scenarios for a grid collapse.

EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack: In this scenario, terrorists or an enemy nation would detonate a nuclear weapon at a high altitude above the U.S., releasinga burst of radiation that would interact with the Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere—including the ionosphere, the thin upper layer filled with free electrons, which facilitates radio communications. As a result, a powerful electrical current would radiate down to the Earth and create additional currents that would course through manmade electrical circuits as well. Electrical infrastructure and electronic devices would receive severe shocks, causing severe, widespread damage. A 2004 Congressional commission warned that such an attack could cause “unprecedented cascading failures.” But even a localized EMP attack could cause a lot of damage. A 2008 Congressional Research Service report predicted that an attack on the Washington DC-Baltimore region that only damaged 10 percent of communications systems and the electrical grid and 20 percent of electronic devices would still require a month of recovery time and inflict as much as $34 billion in economic losses.

Solar flare: Not all of the threats to the grid are from human enemies. A solar storm, which would spew a surge of radiation across the 93million-mile distance between the Sun and our Earth, causing an electromagnetic pulse similar to the one that a high-altitude nuclear blast would trigger–except that it might be even bigger, and have even more devastating effects. While we’ve known the destructive effects of solar weather on Earth’s electrical infrastructure since the 19th century, the first really clear-cut warning came in 1989, when a moderate-intensity solar storm caused northeastern Canada’s Hydro-Quebec power grid to fail, leaving millions of people without electricity for nine hours. Yousef Butt, a scientist at Center for Astrophysics at Harvard University, argued in a 2010 article in the online journal Space Review that the likelihood of a devastating EMP from a solar storm is greater than that from an intentional EMP attack. (See related story: “As Sun Storms Ramp Up, Electric Grid Braces for Impact.”)

Grid failure: There’s also the possibility that the grid simply could break down on its own. (See related photos: “The World’s Worst Power Outages.”) That’s because of a crucial design flaw: when one part of the grid breaks down, it can cause a phenomenon called “cascading failure,” in which the whole grid progressively collapses like a stack of dominoes. “What happens is, a failure occurs somewhere and weakens the system a bit,” Iowa State University engineering professor Ian Dobson explained in a 2012 article. “On a bad day, something else happens. Usually it doesn’t, but on that day, let’s say, it does. If it’s a really bad day, then a third thing happens and the system becomes degraded. You’re in a situation where it’s more likely that the next failure is going to happen because the last failure already happened. That’s the idea of cascading failure…Everything in the power system is protected so it doesn’t fry when something goes wrong. Things can disconnect to protect the equipment, but if you disconnect enough things, you get a blackout.” (See related blog post: “Preparing for the Zombie Apocalypse: Are Microgrids Our Only Chance?”)

August 02, 2013

The Coast Guard is adopting the Ozone Widget Framework as part of WatchKeeper, the service's web-based information management and sharing system for port security, Rear Adm. Mark Butt told a July 31 House panel.

The Ozone Widget Framework is a National Security Agency-developed framework for development of multiple lightweight widgets to run in a browser. The Defense Department made the source code publicly open source in December under an Apache license. Its developers have since undertaken a large refactoring project in order to address scalability issues.

The OWF is not a data standard and it doesn't impose a common data model, meaning that widgets operating in a OWF browser need not all come from a single data source or depend on a particular metadata schema. Proponents say its strength comes precisely from the versatility of data that can be turned into a widget for display inside a browser. The OWF is a mechanism for the presentation of data.

The OWF will let Coast Guard interagency operations centers "take disparate inputs, and then correlate both the track data, the sensor data, as well as various databases and be able to put it in a format where the Coast Guard WatchKeeper and the IOCs are then able to use that information," Butt told the House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee on Coast Guard and maritime transportation.

"Alright, that'll never work," responded Subcommittee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), who said there should be a data standard. "I'm in industry, I know the standards," he said.

The Coast Guard has acknowledged difficulty in convincing port security agencies to utilize WatchKeeper. During a September subcommittee hearing, Stephen Caldwell, Government Accountability Office director of homeland security and justice issues, noted that research for a February 2012 report (.pdf) found that 82 percent of those given access to WatchKeeper "had never even logged on."

During the hearing, Caldwell also said that port security funding grants have emphasized the installation of security systems, but not their sustainment. As a result, port authorities "generally aren't used to maintaining them and keeping things up," he said.

Butt said the Coast Guard is using game theory to make port patrols more effective by making the timing of a patrol look random. "Even though we're having to slide back operations a bit, what we're working on is ideas...that give the appearance that we're out there a lot more than we are," he said.

July 14, 2013

Sat, 07/13/2013 - 9:40am

On a cool September night in 1859, campers in Colorado were roused from sleep by a “light so bright that one could easily read common print,” as one newspaper described it. Some of them, confused, got up and began making breakfast.

Farther east, thousands of New Yorkers were rushing onto their roofs and sidewalks to gaze up at the heavens. The sky was glowing, ribboned in yellow, white and crimson.

At the time, it was a dazzling display of nature. Yet if the same thing happened today, it would be an utter catastrophe.

The auroras of 1859, known as the “Carrington Event,” came after the sun unleashed a large coronal mass ejection, a burst of charged plasma aimed directly at the Earth. When the particles hit our magnetosphere, they triggered a fierce geomagnetic storm that lit up the sky and frazzled communication wires around the world. Telegraphs in Philadelphia were spitting out “fantastical and unreadable messages,” one paper reported, with some systems unusable for many hours.

Today, electric utilities, telecommunications providers and the insurance industry are grappling with a scary possibility. A solar storm on the scale of that in 1859 would wreak havoc on power grids, pipelines and satellites. In the worst case, it could leave 20 million to 40 million people in the Northeast without power — possibly for years — as utilities struggled to replace thousands of fried transformers stretching from Washington to Boston. Chaos and riots might ensue.

That’s not a lurid sci-fi fantasy, but rather a sober new assessment by Lloyd’s of London, the world’s oldest insurance market. The report notes that a smaller solar-induced geomagnetic storm in 1989 left 6 million people in Quebec without power for nine hours.

“We’re much more dependent on electricity now than we were in 1859,” explains Neil Smith, an emerging-risks researcher at Lloyd’s and co-author of the report. “The same event today could have a huge financial impact” — pegged at up to $2.6 trillion for an especially severe storm. (To put that in context, Hurricane Sandy caused about $68 billion in damage.)

The possibility of apocalypse has piqued scientific interest in solar storms in recent years. But researchers are now realizing that space weather can cause all sorts of lesser mischief, such as disorienting GPS satellites or severing contact between polar flights and air-traffic control.

So, in recent years, scores of businesses and government agencies are starting to take space weather more seriously. Electric-grid operators are devising plans to reroute currents through their systems to brace for solar storms. Airlines such as Delta have developed plans to reroute flights in the case of emergency. The U.S. military has begun to realize that space-weather blips can disrupt communication in the heat of battle.

But preparing for disruptions isn’t easy. Just as interest in space weather is surging, the United States is facing the loss of key monitoring satellites in the coming years because budget cuts mean that aging systems aren’t being replaced. And scientists are rushing to plug troubling gaps in their knowledge about these storms.

The problem is far from theoretical. Last month, at a conference on space weather in Silver Spring, Md., Daniel Baker of the University of Colorado announced that the sun had unleashed another large coronal mass ejection in July 2012 that traveled at speeds comparable to the Carrington Event of 1859. It missed the Earth by a week.

“Had that storm occurred a week earlier, it would have been a direct hit,” Baker said. “And we’d probably be having a very different conversation about this today.”

When it comes to space weather, the foremost concern is what a solar-induced geomagnetic storm might do to electric grids around the world.

At certain points in the sun’s cycle, as sunspots appear and flares erupt, the sun will eject part of its outer atmosphere, a cloud of fast-moving charged particles. If one of these coronal mass ejections hits the Earth’s magnetic field in just the right way, it can induce strong ground currents that travel through power lines, oil pipelines and telecom cables.

A truly severe geomagnetic storm could create currents powerful enough to overload electric grids and damage a significant number of high-voltage transformers, which can take a long time to repair or replace. That could leave millions without power for months or years.

“That’s a key vulnerability,” Smith says. “If you had a really big solar event, there just aren’t enough replacement transformers available. It can take up to 12 months to build new ones.”

As it turns out, most utilities don’t keep lots of spares around. The largest transformers, which convert the electricity in high-voltage lines to lower voltages, are custom-built, can cost millions of dollars and weigh up to 400 tons. Procuring a new one is a complex process that involves lining up the necessary copper and steel supplies, working with a long chain of manufacturers and arranging specialized transport. So, the Lloyd’s report notes, if even 20 transformers in the Northeast were knocked out, the logistical challenges would be “extremely concerning.”

Smith notes that the Northeast, with its aging power grid and peculiar geologic features, is especially at risk. Suffice it to say, it’s not fun to think about what would happen to the region if 40 million people had to go without power indefinitely.

Take Pittsburgh: One 2004 assessment from Carnegie Mellon University found that a large number of the city’s services were simply unprepared for an extended blackout. Half the city would lose water after three days if the city’s electrical pumps couldn’t be revived. Grocery stores, gas stations and cellphone networks would be knocked out. Police stations would go dark. Traffic lights would blink out. Most hospitals have backup systems in place, but emergency rooms would be strained if, say, the air conditioning went out during a hot summer.

“The absence of such fundamental services could lead to major and widespread social unrest, riots and theft,” the Lloyd’s report warns.

In theory, power utilities could try to take precautions if they had advance notice of a major solar storm headed our way. Using existing satellites, the National Weather Service’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo., can detect an incoming event that’s about 30 minutes away.

Grid operators would have to react quickly. For example, PJM Interconnection operates a huge swath of the U.S. power grid from Illinois to the District of Columbia, serving 60 million people. After receiving a storm warming, human operators would re-dispatch electricity to reduce the flow of current from west to east. That would minimize the grid’s vulnerability to ground currents, Frank Koza, the executive director of operations support at PJM, said at the June space weather conference.

For a modest solar storm, Koza said, PJM’s operators could respond if voltages started to drop anywhere in the system. (Pepco, which delivers electricity to 778,000 homes and businesses in the District of Columbia and Maryland, is a member of PJM.)

But there’s a limit to how much these strategies can help. “The one we’re really concerned about is extreme space weather, a Carrington-level event,” Koza said. “What would happen in that scenario? I would have to tell you we don’t really know.”

For bigger storms, there are technologies that could harden the grid, such as capacitors that can help block the flow of ground currents induced by a geomagnetic event. In Quebec, the Canadian government has spent about $1.2 billion on these technologies since the 1989 blackout.

One problem, says Chris Beck of the Electric Infrastructure Security Council, is that many of these technologies are expensive and could make the current grid slightly less efficient in its day-to-day operations.

“We’ve designed our power lines to work efficiently under perfect conditions — long transmission lines, high voltages,” Beck says. Unfortunately, those characteristics make the grid particularly vulnerable to a solar storm. So there’s a trade-off.

Recently, the federal government decided to take a more serious look at the issue. Last fall, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued an order that will eventually require grid operators to prepare both operational and technological responses to a space weather event.

Koza said he expects most grid operators to have response plans in the next year or two, but “engineered mitigation” could be another two to four years away.

Insurance companies, meanwhile, are trying to figure out how to get a handle on the risk from a solar storm. Will a major one come around once every 150 years? More often than that? “We’re hoping we might one day be able to cover these risks,” says Smith of Lloyd’s, “but we’ll need to be able to quantify them more accurately.”

Policymakers have also started getting involved. For a long time, conservatives such as Newt Gingrich were mostly interested in the risks to electric grids posed by a nuclear weapon that exploded in the atmosphere and induced ground currents. In June, Gingrich spoke to members of the Electromagnetic Pulse Caucus in the House, a group of 16 Republicans and two Democrats, about this possibility. “This could be the kind of catastrophe that ends civilization,” Gingrich said, “and that’s not an exaggeration.”

Now that the Cold War has ended, however, many of these Cassandras have switched over to warning about solar storms, which can have a similar effect, albeit on a smaller scale. Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., a founder of the EMP Caucus, has pushed a bill to protect against both “natural and man-made EMP events.” And in public, he tends to put more emphasis on solar storms.

“We’re starting to see more awareness there,” Beck says, “although we’re not quite to the point where we’re actually putting solutions in place.”

Setting aside apocalyptic blackouts, solar storms and space weather can create all sorts of hiccups in the global economy that scientists are only just beginning to understand.

Case in point: During the Battle of Takur Ghar in Afghanistan in 2002, a U.S. helicopter team was sent in to pick up a team of Navy SEALs. The SEALs sent a message to the helicopter warning the team not to land, but for some reason, it was never received. The helicopter landed under intense fire and four Americans were killed — an event dramatized in Sean Naylor’s bestselling account of Operation Anaconda, “Not a Good Day to Die.”

Some scientists now suspect that space weather could have been to blame for the incident.

At the space weather conference in June, Michael Kelly of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory presented early evidence that a form of space weather known as “scintillation” can cause disturbances in the ionosphere and disrupt local radio communications. Researchers are working to model this phenomenon more accurately.

Airlines, too, have to take outbursts from the sun into account. Delta runs a number of commercial flights over the poles, such as routes between Detroit and Beijing and between Atlanta and Tokyo. But if they get a last-minute warning from the Space Weather Prediction Center of a geomagnetic storm, the planes often have to divert their routes away from the poles or risk losing radio contact with the ground. These diversions can cost thousands of dollars, Delta officials noted, so better predictions would help a great deal.

And those concerns only scratch the surface.

Joseph Kunches, a scientist at the Space Weather Prediction Center, says we’re still learning about activities that could be disrupted by solar weather. Satellite communications can go astray. Pipelines can corrode from ground currents. Even human space travel faces a threat.

“Radiation is a big issue for space travel — particularly once you get away from the Earth’s magnetic field,” he says. Astronauts working outside the Earth’s protective shield can be particularly vulnerable to bursts of solar radiation, which can have harmful health effects. That means that if we ever want to wander around in space, it would be helpful to have a better grasp of space weather.

“In 1972, there was actually a huge eruption that fortuitously fell between two of the Apollo flights, so the radiation didn’t hurt anybody,” Kunches says. “But it’s a problem.”

And there are still plenty of unknowns. Kunches and other experts pointed to the potential impact of solar eruptions on GPS technology. Certain storms could degrade the signal as it makes its way from the satellite to the ground. GPS is built into so much of the modern economy — from navigation to geophysical exploration by oil and gas companies — that any interference with GPS signals could be quite costly.

“I call it the cyber-electric cocoon we’ve built around the Earth,” says Baker, who heads the Space Physics Research Laboratory at the University of Colorado. “There are all these relationships that most people don’t even have a clue are there, and we’re still trying to understand everything that’s at risk.”

One big problem that businesses are having in preparing for a space weather attack is that they’re still not sure, exactly, what to prepare for. Should we expect a Carrington event? Something like the Quebec storm in 1989? And how often do these actually come along? After all, it’s hard to know how often we should expect catastrophic events.

“Until we know that, the industry will be limited in its response,” said Koza of PJM Interconnection.

And there’s plenty more that space scientists are still trying to grasp. It’s difficult to predict, for instance, whether a solar outburst will actually create a storm when it hits Earth. A great deal depends on how a coronal mass ejection interacts with other solar winds as it moves toward us. Kunches likens it to knowing that a hurricane is coming, but not being able to measure its barometric pressure.

It would also be helpful to have more spacecraft studying the sun and giving us advance warning of storms. But, if anything, the Earth’s alert systems are about to get worse, not better.

Right now, the United States has four space satellites situated between the Earth and the sun, which can provide roughly 30 minutes’ warning of a major solar eruption. But these satellites are all reaching the end of their planned lives (and fuel tanks), and there’s only one replacement satellite scheduled to launch in 2014.

At the space conference in June, various speakers discussed ways to improve our ability to watch the sun. One engineer described fantastical plans for a satellite with a 100-square-meter “sail” that would use be steered and pushed by the sun’s photons in order to get closer and closer to the star without getting sucked in by gravity. A solar-sail satellite could, in theory, give us twice as much warning to prepare for a space storm.

But so far, these plans are all theoretical. “There’s a real need for a truly operational, 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week space weather observatory,” Baker says. “But right now, we don’t see that coming from policymakers or the agencies that would have to step up.”

That means we may have to hope for a bit of luck in the years ahead. Solar activity tends to follow an 11-year cycle, with the most intense events often occurring near the peaks of the solar maximum — which, NASA says, could well arrive in late 2013, although it’s difficult to predict for sure.

That doesn’t mean the big one will hit then (for one thing, sunspot activity has been rather muted of late). But it does lend some urgency to the problem.

“We’re really on an unknown timeline here,” Beck says. “One of these could happen at any time.”

ANOTHER X-FLARE ON MAY 15: When the week began, the sun hadn't unleashed an X-flare all year long. In only two days, sunspot AR1748 has produced four. The latest X-flare from this active sunspot occured on May 15th at 0152 UT. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the extreme ultraviolet flash: Although the sunspot is not directly facing Earth, this flare might have produced a CME with an Earth-directed component.

We are waiting for coronagraph data from SOHO and the twin STEREO probes to check this possibility. Stay tuned for updates. In summary, AR1748 has produced an X1.7-class flare (0217 UT on May 13), an X2.8-class flare (1609 UT on May 13), an X3.2-class flare (0117 UT on May 14), and an X1-class flare (0152 on May 15). These are the strongest flares of the year, and they signal a significant increase in solar activity.

April 07, 2013

Hacktivist group Anonymous has launched a second massive cyber attack against Israel, dubbed #OpIsrael. The collective threatens to “disrupt and erase Israel from cyberspace” in protest over its mistreatment of Palestinians.

Dozens of Israeli websites were unavailable as of early Sunday.

In a video message posted on YouTube, Anonymous said that on April 7, “elite cyber-squadrons from around the world have decided to unite in solidarity with the Palestinian people against Israel as one entity to disrupt and erase Israel from cyberspace.”

Addressing the Israeli government, the group stated: “You have NOT stopped your endless human right violations. You have NOT stopped illegal settlements. You have NOT respected the ceasefire. You have shown that you do NOT respect international law.”

Earlier on Saturday, an Anonymous affiliated group identifying itself as The N4m3le55 cr3w announced that they “have gathered 600 websites and 100 plus servers we will be attacking” throughout Israel. The list includes banks, schools, businesses and a host of prominent government websites. “That is just our targets,” the group warned.

“We cannot speak on what the rest of Anonymous will be attacking but we can guarantee it will be in the 1000′s.”

The massive cyber attack falls on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day. Anonymous has accused the Israeli government of mistreating its own citizens, violating treaties, attacking its neighbors, threatening to shut down the Internet in Gaza and ignoring “repeated warnings” about human rights abuses.

“The estimations are that [the cyber-attacks] will reach an unusual level that we have never seen before,” Deputy Information Security Officer Ofir Cohen said in an e-mail sent to Knesset employees on Thursday, The Jerusalem Post reported.

Cohen added that the E-government – the Israeli government’s information security body – and the Knesset’s internet service provider (ISP) are working to block the attack.

On Wednesday, thousands of Israeli Facebook users were infected by a virus, although its effects at this point appear to be minimal.

On Friday, Israeli radio reported that scores of large organizations had closed their websites to shield them from hacker attacks.

Despite the impending threat, Lior Tabansky, a fellow at the Yuval Ne’eman Workshop for Science, Technology, and Security of Tel Aviv University, told the Times of Israel that distributed denial of service (DDos) attacks, which work by overwhelming targeted servers with traffic which stems from multiple systems, are the only tool at the hackers’ disposal.

“Unless they have names and passwords, [DDoS] is really their only attack strategy. Unfortunately, there is little a company can do to stop it, but it is not the major cyber-threat many people, especially in the media, believe it to be. It’s more of an annoyance, and if they do manage to intimidate sites into submission, the victory will be one of public relations.” However, other experts have warned that the hackers may attempt to deploy malware such as “Trojan horses”, which can steal information and harm host computer systems.

Anonymous launched the first ‘OpIsrael’ cyber-attacks in November 2012 during Operation Pillar of Defense, an eight day Israeli Defense Force (IDF) incursion into the Gaza s trip.

Some 700 Israeli website suffered repeated DDos attacks, which targeted high-profile government systems such as the Foreign Ministry, the Bank of Jerusalem, the Israeli Defence Ministry, the IDF blog, and the Israeli President’s official website.

The Israeli Finance Ministry reported an estimated 44 million unique attacks on government websites over a four day period.

Anti-Israel hackers stepped up their attempts to pull down Israeli sites over the weekend, with numerous attempted denial of service (DDoS) attacks against Israeli government sites. Hacker sites listed numerous websites they claimed to have disabled, and several sites reported slowdowns on Saturday night, but nearly all the sites the hackers claimed to have taken down were operating normally.

Meanwhile, Israeli hackers began to retaliate against the anti-Israel hack attacks, called #OpIsrael, with an operation of their own against sites in countries associated with the anti-Israel groups. A group called the Israeli Elite Strike Force over the weekend disabled dozens of sites in Pakistan, Iran, Syria, and several north African countries – and even acquired a domain name associated with the OpIsrael attack — opisrael.com. Instead of listing the sites anti-Israel hackers have defaced, that site features educational facts about Israel and the Jewish people, and a warning to anti-Israel groups that Israeli hackers were ready to fight fire with fire.

opsirael.com on Saturday night

Israeli Elite Strike Force seems to have been organized quickly in the past few days, in response to the threat by anti-Israel hackers to “erase Israel from the Internet” on April 7. The hackers released a list of some 1,300 Israeli sites that they planned to strike, claiming to have begun their attacks already on Saturday. But a check of most of the sites that the hackers claimed to have disabled – sites belonging to the Bank of Israel, the Tax Authority, the Central Bureau of Statistics, and other government agencies – showed they were operating normally. Several sites were hacked by groups associated with OpIsrael, but most of those were privately owned sites.

The hackers claimed to be identified with Anonymous, but Dr. Tal Pavel of MiddleEasterNet said that the group behind OpIsrael was most likely an ad-hoc assembly of Arab hacktivists calling themselves “Dangerous Hackers.” The group was not necessarily associated with international hacking group Anonymous, Pavel said, and on Saturday, individuals claiming to be members of Anonymous posted on the forum site 4Chan that they were not associated with OpIsrael. However, another alleged Anonymous site, possibly located in Sweden, on Saturday night claimed that Anonymous hackers were involved in the anti-Israel cyber attack.

A Twitter feed, ostensibly by Anonymous hackers, claimed it had stolen passwords and information from Israeli sites, including the Facebook account login data for Israeli government officials. However, Pavel said, such claims could not be trusted, because hacker groups often recycled old information from previously leaked databases, claiming it was fresh, in order to score a public relations victory. In several instances in recent days, said Pavel, he discovered that names and passwords hackers claimed to have stolen from Israeli servers last week were several years old.

Meanwhile, Israeli Elite Strike Force worked on Saturday night to pull down more sites. The group started attacking sites in Pakistan Friday but took off for Shabbat.

“We wish all our JEWISH brothers a Shabbat Shalom,” the group said in its Twitter feed. “This was just a little taste before the day of rest. Hell’s Fire To Come.”